Bookathon Bonus Blind Books

 It's my last day and my eyes haven't fallen out yet. My goal was 30 books as I started a day late so I've really got two books here to make up for it that I've been reading. 

Remember the Yellow Pages? Let your fingers do the talking. I am a free range book worm and will read anything, including dictionaries and sometimes even the newspaper ads if there is NOTHING else. But thankfully I discovered actual books and in my years as a librarian the ones I prefer are the real life stories, especially memoirs of people spilling the beans on their lives, warts and all. I especially like memoirs of people who have a different perspective of life, and everyone has a tale to tell. (Whether true or not, is something you'll have to be the judge of) 

Thank you to those who recommended I read Haben. How a deaf-blind woman conquered Harvard Law. Haben Girma (Haben means 'pride' in Eritrean) was born in Eritrea, grew up in Ethiopia and the US and is deaf-blind. She has partial hearing and partial sight (today we call it 'impaired') in that she can hear within a very small range while everything else is muffled and can see blurry outlines of things. So smell, taste and touch are very important to her, and her memoir is mostly about these things. She can read braille and has a machine that converts speech to braille so she can communicate, she also has guide dog and writes about her experiences with her puppy peeing everywhere, and can use a cane.

 When she went to college she asked the cafeteria if they would print their menus in braille or simply email her a copy to convert so she wouldn't have to have a jackpot surprise every time she had a meal. She thought this might be a reasonable request but it turns out more difficult than she imagined! This in turn led to consider a career in law to become an advocate for those with disabilities. So she went to Harvard, changed legislation and met the President of the USA. 

I so admire that - you can read about what happened in her book in which she does all sorts of things it was not considered possible for a person with disabilities to do. (If it were me I might consider a career in blind taste testing gourmet meals). 

Book number two was Do you dream in color? Insights from a girl without sight. Lauren Rubin shares her experiences being born blind (but not deaf) in which she becomes an opera singer and jewellery maker on the side. She does dream in colour but being blind also means she's sensitive. It also meant when it came to a partner, it didn't matter who they looked like (or what race, which seems to be a big issue in the USA) or whether they were a boy or a girl. Her parents were very supportive and it seems she never had to want for anything, if she wanted to go skiing she learned, and if she wanted to learn opera she got in the best schools, and if she wanted to go to a museum she was allowed to touch all the paintings and objects. However she didn't always have a great time at mainstream school with people who didn't want to be her friend because she was 'different' or felt they might be obligated to look after her. She also applied for a guide dog like Haben but didn't have problems toilet training with her puppy. 

I found reading these books about blind people to be eye opening (and everyone who is blind will have unique experiences) no two would be the same. What comes across is they'd like to be self-determined and have their rights to independence just as other Americans do (it's enshrined in their constitution) so good on them. I've got another one to read called 'Planet of the Blind' this time about a blind man.

If you are reading this and haven't donated to Great Kiwi Bookathon to support blind and low vision with readers, assistance, guide dogs, audio books and braille then please consider it before my eyes fall out. I am securing my future you see so if my eyes fail me I know who I can turn to. Happy reading!

Bookathon Bonus - The Miracle Worker

I'm reading biographies of blind people for the rest of Bookathon of which American Helen Keller (1880-1968) was one of the most famous. I recommend this one to find out more.

Helen Keller - A life by Dorothy Herman

 I didn't know much about deaf-blind Helen Keller other than her portrayal in the movie The Miracle Worker where she was played by young Patty Duke. I didn't know what she was like as an adult, so this biography satisfied my curiousity, it was very well researched. It explored her family background, her devotion to Annie Sullivan who was also partially blind and lived with Helen for the rest of her life and whom Helen called 'Teacher', and her other relationships too after Annie died.

Helen lived into her 80s. I learned that Annie was the driving force behind her intellectual pursuits, Helen got into college and graduated, and had a mind of her own, she wrote books, she learned to speak although this was not perfect, she starred in a Hollywood movie called Deliverance of her own life, the duo were stars of Vaudeville, lecture tours and the chautaqua circuit as an advocate and activist. Helen met all the famous people of her day including Mark Twain and Alexander Graham Bell. She was patronised but also dependent on philanthropists, but many were unaware of her radical political views, which some of the Blind Foundation tried to suppress.

Helen also wrote many books about her life and experience as a deaf-blind person. To many she seemed a saint. In the book it was emphasised what a great beauty she was, in that she was attractive and photogenic, so that helped. She was honored and feted in her lifetime. However it seems her dependency did come with a great cost, Annie's life -- and this book explores that symbiotic relationship, that few deaf-blind people have today because they aren't usually dependent on just one person. I think that bond she had with Annie from when she was a child meant the world to her. Her own flesh and blood family, on the other hand, remained distant.

I found this bio really interesting. Ironically later in life Annie's eyes failed her and she did go blind. 

 Annie Sullivan to me was a true heroine and friend to Helen Keller and few people won't be touched by how Helen Keller learned to read words for the first time by her experience with the water pump and Annie writing the word for water in the palm of Helen's hands. As with Louis Braille, get your hands on these books and read. 🙌

Bookathon Bonus - Louis Braille

 Hooray I finished the alphabet! That doesn't mean I've finished reading though. I promised four bonus books to end the month. Since we are raising money for Blind and Low Vision Children I would definitely recommend this book.

Louis Braille - The boy Who Invented Books for the Blind by Margaret Davidson

Louis Braille was only 12 years old when he invented the raised dot alphabet that was named after him.

He had full vision originally but was blinded as a toddler when he accidently got poked in the eye with an awl. (Parents with toddlers - keep an eye on them and all sharp objects away from curious hands!)

His parents took him from his French village to a school for the blind in Paris. There he invented his alphabet and his classmates loved it because they could now read books without anyone having to read out loud for them. But the alphabet was hard to catch on with those who already could see, and they didn't want to lose their jobs if the blind could read for themselves!

It took many years but eventually braille became popular in all schools for the blind and known worldwide.

I enjoyed reading this book, it is geared for children so, maybe doesn't have the full story but enough for us to know that Louis was a very special boy who changed the world for the better. He stayed a school teacher all his life and people didn't know much about him (or care) but his invention was far reaching.

The back cover is embossed with the Braille alphabet so see if you can get your hands on this book 👐

Bookathon - Z

 Zack Zombie. Plants vs Zombies. Mark Zuckerberg.

Z is a hard letter, and I'm tempted to read books about zombies (or zombosses), or fake books that are not really books, like Facebook, or The Book Thief by Mark Zusack, but that would be cheating as I saw the movie and haven't read that book. I did come across a copy in the book fridge library that was stamped Waitakere College, but it had been withdrawn so it actually ended up at Paremoremo Prison. I took a lot of withdrawn books there as I was weeding the collection, a lot of them for children, as children of prisoners needed something to read to stop them going crazy (and their dads too). 

My sister once gave me a copy of the Librarian of Auschwitz as a gift which was a real life story of a librarian who smuggled books into the concentration camps. She figured I might enjoy it but I'm like I already work in schools that can be like concentration camps and I don't really need to be reminded. 

This is because many schools tend to  have some kind of Gestapo/Nazi regime thing going on that represses any freedom of speech so you can't really say what you truly think. And woe betide you if you are in the minority and don't fit in with everyone else. I am not sure why this is, but 30 children in a classroom of mandatory attendance can sometimes feel like a bootcamp. When children didn't come to school the Principals would worry and call the parents but I always got the children who came to school but hated going to class so they would come to the library instead. If school was more fun and engaging maybe they'd want to come instead of playing truant. And if there were no bullies. But getting rid of school bullies was always a problem especially when teachers sometimes exhibited bullying behaviour themselves. That was when school became this scary place you'd want to stay away from. Work doesn't make you free after all. 

I tried carving out a safe space for readers in the library. It was here that we could tell our own stories. If nobody could find a Z book I would tell them find a NZ story. These were often lost in a sea of American, Australian and British books that spoke of slavery, convicts and Empire.  The series I spent most of my time reading that was often overlooked was the My New Zealand Story series of books. Written from the perspective of a tween about a period of NZ history in diary format, one could experience what it was like to win the vote for women, be a gumdigger, live in Auckland's Chinatown, take a stand at Bastion Point, watch the Auckland Harbour Bridge being built, win the America's Cup, take a ferry ride on the Wahine, undergo a Dawn Raid, rescue someone at Tangiwai, hear about relatives dying at Mt Erebus, or live like a hippie in an Ohu. You could be there when the French blew up the Rainbow Warrior, or check for aftershocks at the Canterbury Earthquakes, survive the pandemic (both small pox and Spanish Flu) or be a Mission girl in the Hellhole of the Pacific, or a camp cook in Kauri logging operation or what happened when the nation divided over the 1981 Springbok Rugby tour and not know what side you were supposed to be on.

I've lived vicariously through all those stories so now I know what it's like. I've been with Anne Frank in The Secret Annexe and read about her hopes and dreams for her future from her diary and every story I ever read I feel like I've become a wiser and more understanding person to have read it. Z is when you reach the end of the alphabet and realise now it's time to rearrange the letters into stories of your own. 

Four more days of Great Kiwi Bookathon. Please stay on for more books about what it's like to experience blind and low vision and to value the precious freedom to be able to read. 

Bookathon - Y

 Y is for Young Adult

Imagine you are girl and told you can't go to school because you are a girl. You have to stay home and cook and clean instead - for the boys. Boys get to go but you can't. 

When you ask why it's because, as discussed,  you are a girl. Being a girl is not anything you can change. 

So what happens when you DO go to school? Well, when the government decides schools are only for boys, any girl who goes is liable to get shot by the Taliban. Were they just thinking of your safety? 

Malala Yousefzai did a dangerous thing. She wrote a blog journalling her experience. She learned how to read and write at school as her dad was the Principal and operated a private non-government school that accepted girls before all the rules changed to Sharia Law. She was targeted and she was 12 years old when she was shot on the bus on her way to school. The amazing thing about it is she was not killed. She woke up in Birmingham, England as after she was shot she was airlifted straight there from Pakistan. 

The story is in her memoir I am Malala and now she advocates for education and the right for girls to have it worldwide. This book is banned in Pakistan, but even if it was available, most of the women there and even the men have such low literacy rates, they wouldn't have been able to read it. 

It's wonderful to have an education, I certainly value mine. But sadly, for a lot of females, being smart means you'll be targeted and boys resent you. So maybe we need to have a conversation about that. I can think of perhaps a typical male response. Instead of girls having an education, maybe girls should all learn self-defence. Or maybe they should just all stay home, it's safer. Lest you think 'this is just an extreme Islamic thing' I have encountered sexism within Christian communities where girls have no say in anything either and are prevented from having the most basic education or told they cannot do this because they are female. Are we just pretty faces and empty vessels?

What do you think? Malala Yousafazi also wrote a children's picture book called 'Malala's Magic Pencil'. Imagine not being able to communicate, or speak or write and being treated like a dumb animal or pet simply because you are a girl. Or a maid of all work. When I read this to them, children, both boys and girls are horrified. Typically children are now encouraged to speak up and be noisy in class as that is their natural response. It's often always the loudest and biggest that becomes the bully and in most environments that tends to be the boys.  But those who are quiet readers prefer to master this secret thing called writing that you can communicate without even saying anything. I give them chalk malkers and say go for it, write, express yourselves, practise and they write all over the windows. Magic Pencils also require sharpening and the bright ones make little comic books because they all want to write and be authors too. 

The Battle of the Sexes seems to rage on and none of us can really escape from it. I'm all for boys learning nurturing skills too, and it's great to see boys also getting into cooking and becoming chefs at culinary schools and designing smart robot vacuum cleaners, dishwashers and washing machines  at engineering school so us girls no longer need to slave away fetching water. Robots can now do our jobs! In some countries though the shooting happens in schools amongst the children themselves and it doesn't matter what gender you are though it's generally males doing the shooting, schools being taken over, libraries being removed and used as breeding grounds for terrorists. Some people are just haters.  I have been at some schools where they actively encouraged children to fight and be in competition with each other like a real life Hunger Games except they call it House Wars. I don't know the answer to that but I am dismayed to witness that enshrined in their pedagogy. 

Malala completed her high school education in England and went on to study at Oxford University where she graduated with honors. She won the Nobel Peace Prize at age 17 and now advocates for the right for girls to have an education everywhere. She calls on world leaders to invest in 'books, not bullets'

Why not do the same and support the  Great Kiwi Bookathon?

Bookathon - X

 X marks the spot. Exams. Exposé

 I am reading a book at the moment recommended by my counsellor called Taming Toxic People. The science of identifying & dealing with psychopaths at work & at home. 

No I haven't been divorced or dropped by a callous ex. Although the experience of working in a toxic workplace with a boss who shows pyschopathic traits is sadly all too common. The advice given, psychopaths cannot change so look for another job while you are there is what it amounts to. On the cover is a silhouette of a man brandishing a naughty chair and a whip. 

 Don't get the wrong idea, I am not reading x-rated books! When children couldn't find an X book I told them try finding one with X in the title. Or it could be about X-men or My cat likes to hide in boXes or My Mum has X-ray Vision. 

So Taming ToXic People. It turns out I have read this author before. David Gillespie writes books about sugar being Sweet Poison, and being a dad to seven children and advocating for Free Schools. He also wrote a book called Big Fat Lies, and I'm wondering if it's similar to Liane Moriarity's Big Little Lies, which put me off divorced soccer mums and primary schools big time. It also made me question what the parents were REALLY up to that made their children so violent, at least, in Australia. 

The Learning Network only gave this answer to everything - trauma. Basically even having children is traumatic and when you delve into the science of brain injury and stress response and the amount of drugs given to pregnant mums to ease the pain I'm thinking no wonder it's a miracle most us are actually coming out alive. My hunch is psychopaths had too much exposure to anaesthetic at birth and hence cannot empathise with others or feel pain. 

There's another author I recommend who DOES start with X and she has only ever one name, Xinran. I have read all her books from What the Chinese Don't Eat, The Good women of China to China Witness, to Sky Burial and Miss Chopsticks, and her most heartbreaking, Messages from an Unknown Chinese Mother to her most recent Buy Me the Sky: The Remarkable truth of China's one-child generations. 

Having not ever lived in China but possessing an entire DNA of Chinese blood I can only say I am extraordinary lucky to be alive here to tell the tale. Which I may do at some point. It's often the case that the truth is stranger than fiction. How I miss my yum cha book restaurant. Xinran's books would be prominently displayed on the trolley along with Por Por's cookbook. You can no longer silence a Chinese woman or bind her feet like they did in the olden days. She'll do a dangerous thing - she'll write a book. 

Happy reading! xxx

Stick around for dessert after we've finished the alphabet at the Great Kiwi Bookathon

Bookathon - W

 Where's Wally?

Actually Wally is staying in the library as he's been banned from the classroom. Teachers were saying that I wasn't to let their pupils borrow Where's Wally books because they weren't READING any words.  Because when it came time for SSR (sustained silent reading) they would say they were reading Where's Wally when they were really just looking at the pictures. 

I can't argue with that because I find Where's Wally books frustrating. I can never find Wally either. So I marked the Where's Wally books Not For Loan and they stayed in the puzzle books section of the library. Where he was easy to find. 

Then I worked in another school library where Where's Wally books were allowed to be borrowed. There was a swift circulation of these books along with Minecraft, as digital literacy seemed the order of the day there and the teachers got all the children on to I -pads and tablets as soon as they could see. Even though they mashed up the ipad I had in the library and the replacement went missing. I -pads etc have their place but I am not a fan of them, I prefer turning pages of REAL books.

The books that everyone genuinely wants to READ (i.e the words)  are Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. I think he found the winning formula for the beginning reader and I swear that Dr Seuss never got a look in once the children found this series under W. Elephant and Piggie are a cartoon duo that are like the odd couple. Elephants name is Gerald and he wears glasses, is a bit myopic, and anxious, while Piggie doesn't seem to have a Christian name and she is carefree and happy-go-lucky. They are best friends and have mini dramas that involve dilemmas like Should I share my ice cream? ask each other Are you ready to play outside? and think of adventures like Let's Go For a Drive! (even though they are not yet old enough to drive, and even though they are animals and not humans). The most popular title would have been There is a Bird on Your Head!, while the most loved would definitely be The Thank You Book.

Waiting is Not Easy! is an exercise in patience and your dramatic reading skills. You can pretend to throw a tantrum too in I will take a nap! Though my favourite might have been I really like Slop! great for picky eaters (or readers) especially those who were doing the Pizza challenge and had to read 7 books for rewards. There are 28 books in this series and you wouldn't want to miss reading each 64 page one, so you'd possibly get 4 pizzas out of Mo Willems which is very good value! 

Mo Willem's other books haven't been as popular although children still read The Pigeon has to Go to School. The pigeon is like a 2 year old toddler who thinks he's the centre of the universe. He also wants to drive the bus. I'm sorry pigeon, you have to wait and you have to sit your drivers licence exam before you do that. And take a bath as he's grubby.  Mo Willems books have been translated into all languages and I am waiting on the Te Reo versions of Elephant and Piggie. Happy Pig Day! was definitely a hit in Chinese. They are perfect for reading out loud and I'm sure blind and low vision children will get a kick out of them in a way they can't do with Where's Wally. 

Don't forget to donate to the Great Kiwi Bookathon where these children will gain access to these wonderful books.

Bookathon - V

 Sorry Vasanti while your name does start with V, I already had you under U and it wouldn't be fair to the other V authors. Of which I could only find one but still. V is for Jules Verne, also known as the 'Father of Science Fiction'.

It seems I actually don't read a lot of Science Fiction but the Science Fiction I prefer read is one from more than a hundred  years ago and so most of it has actually come to pass. They have now renamed it Speculative Fiction about books set in the future, and they can be utopian or dystopian. Dystopias are books about the end of the world. So like the Left Behind Series or 88 reasons why the Rapture will be in 1988. Or 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, The Hunger Games, Tomorrow when the War Began, and the Last Kids on Earth. All fun stuff. The Book of Revelation might come under this category as well. But it's only natural that writers of certain era will be worried about the advent of World War Three. Comic conventions in this post-modern era simply call the whole thing Armageddon. 

Utopias on the other hand, aren't so popular. It's now not profitable or compelling enough to write about the wonders of the age and how everything will be wonderful and isn't it a Brave New World - the future is bright and promising. But my author today was a Utopian author even though all the things he wrote about came to pass reading it now takes you back to that bygone age where all these things were potential possibilities on the horizon. 

Now you CAN circumnavigate the globe in 24 hours by jumbo jet or concorde but back when Jules Verne wrote Around the World in 80 days in 1872  the wager was that it couldn't be done in 1920 hours. Reading the novel is entertaining and insightful and a fun adventure through time and space. It's also was hugely popular in his day like how chef/writer  Anthony Bourdain reached cult status eating his way around the world and presenting it in TV (as well as numerous others..Michael Palin, Monty Don, Michael Portillo, Joanna Lumley, Billy Connelley etc)   The best part of 80s days was when Phileas Fogg and Passepourtout met his Indian princess Auoda and took her on a to North America where she marvelled at snow for the first time. 

Armchair travellers like me enjoy it because travel from New Zealand is so expensive. Plus nobody has ever challenged me to a journey by betting a million pounds. The other tale by Jules Verne that I delved into was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I once chose this book for a book club read and everyone turned up to the discussion night with different versions/editions of the classic book. You can read the real life version about life on the Calypso on a Jacques Cousteau expedition, possibly inspired by the Jules Verne tale itself. 

The third of his adventures, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, hasn't actually been accomplished yet. But I live in hope that one day, we could go inside and there is actually an entire metropolis and prehistoric creatures in there that we'd never heard about. As of writing fourth adventure, From the Earth to the Moon, has been accomplished, though I was a bit disappointed in that one, for when Americans landed on the moon they didn't really do much except plant a flag, pick up some moon rocks and gaze back at planet Earth. 

Jules Verne is the second most translated author in the world (the first is Agatha Christie, the third is Shakespeare) but he comes top for me. I love the adventure and excitement and risk taking, possibly why Sir Edmund Hilary is on our $5 note. You can become a foolhardy dreamer too and go places in books...by embarking on a the Great Kiwi Bookathon. Save up your $5 notes and help blind and low vision children experience Utopia as well. 😍

Bookathon - U

 Utopia. Urban Myth. Ubiquitous.

I am stuck on U. But thankfully I found The Boring Book by Vasanti Unka. The Boring Book defies description. It's the kind of book that might put you to sleep, though it has pages and a library card pocket and a date due slip at the back and words, and things in it that don't really make sense. I think it's the kind of book that you might  say you have read to your teacher and they can ask you what it was about and you can be honest and say it was boring!

I've booked Vasanti Unka for Book Week as she knows a bit about books and how they are made, having both written and illustrated a few. Her mystery book 'Who Stole the Rainbow?' has everyone guessing who the culprit was. 

Was it ...the sun?

Was it...the rain?

Was it..the clouds?

You'll have to read it to find out...as I always tell my children. Keep them guessing until the last page. Although I am terrible with mystery books. I always want to skip to the back where all the answers are. 

I am the Universe is a big picture book about the vastness of space...in a large format too. It has a billion star rating. 

I promised Vasanti butter chicken if she would come to the school for Book Week...since she has complied a book called a Suitcase of Saris: From India to Aotearoa : Stories of Pioneer Women. But I don't know if she'd be impressed with the school's butter chicken. I found there would always be too much rice and never enough sauce. So I'll have to find some other way of luring her in..

Then she can teach us how to make things out of socks and gloves and felts because she writes craft books too. I am looking forward to it. Even though I've already nearly done an entire Book Month this June I have thought about extending it and having another Book Week and after that 2024 can be Book Year. 

Currently there's only one more week of the Great Kiwi Bookathon left so help our blind and low vision children access books and get your donations in.

Bookathon - T

 Today's Titles for T authors

The Joy Luck Club. Sisters. The Hobbit.

I'm talking Amy Tan, Raina Telgemeier and J R R Tolkien.

Amy Tan's first novel The Joy Luck Club really did become that touchstone story of immigration and relations between mothers and daughters for a great many Asian Americans - a group and culture as distinctive as African Americans, or even European Americans, not that anyone ever calls them that! While it's been many years since I've read it, it still resonates even now, and when I talk with Asian children of the diaspora it's like we have this thing where we just KNOW...yes this is what Asian parents are like. (Even with fathers and sons) it's like this thousand generation ancestor filial piety thing that you can never really explain to an outsider. We (especially the Chinese) are caught between two worlds and A LOT is expected of us. 

The Joy Luck Club itself can be confusing as it's narrated by four daughters and three mothers, the fourth mother has died so its more a collection of interlocking stories than one narrative.  Like many family sagas has its share of tragedy and triumph. One of the stories in it I remember is the one of the proud mother of a chess champion, and what happens when her prodigy daughter fails a competition. Or, taking from Amy Tan's actual life, how she feels when she fails her piano recital. And then..what about all the other things in life we fail to do? 

I know mum's can't live through our daughters though physically us daughters did live inside our mums for approximately 9 months. But we have to pay them back somehow. And so it is. Amy Tan has written more on Chinese mothers (my favourite was The Kitchen God's Wife) but  for more detail on this phenomenon try reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. 

Sisters is about the bond between sisters this time in a  European American (?) family which is pretty much based on Raina Telegemier's own life. The mum and dad are actually on the verge of breaking up as is quite a common occurrance these days particularly at a vulnerable time for young children and the mum is taking them on a road trip to meet up with the dad, Raina's younger sister sharing the back seat with her and being, as younger sisters can be - completely annoying. 

This is a graphic novel in full colour so it's like reading a storyboard for a potential movie anyway. (Are you listening Disney/Pixar? )  Otherwise, it's just a regular family story but the sisters relationship is front and centre. Raina wants to love her sister, but how can she when she's so different and just doesn't understand? 

This graphic novel/memoir, along with Smile (about Raina getting braces) and Guts (about Raina having IBS) are THE top reads amongst tweens. Raina Telgemeier also illustrated the first few books of the Baby-sitters Club series by Ann M Martin, which had spawned over 250 volumes and sold millions of copies, and are most beloved among the readers who grew up in the late 80s and 90s. Even over Francine Pascale's Sweet Valley High book series which was a precursor to tv shows like Beverly Hills 90210. 

As we now know for girls the most important things in life are relationships. Ok forget about boys, (far too complicated)  let's concentrate on the familial relationships that are more intimate and long lasting than it will ever be between a husband and wife - those between mothers, daughters and sisters. Read  these authors books for understanding and empathy. 

This is not something you will glean from The Hobbit, which really has no girls in it whatsoever...or Americans. As it's set in Middle Earth which is somewhere near New Zealand I believe.  I just wanted to put it out there because J R R Tolkien starts with T and if you looking for escape its probably just the ticket, none of the hobbits actually have relationships or parents they all just seem to live happily barefoot in their hobbit holes and defeat a taniwha/dragon once in a while. And also, ok, there has been several movies but READ the book because the book was original while the movie took liberties which for me ruined it! 

Keep going with the Great Kiwi Bookathon I promise more good books to come..thank you if you've already made a donation. 

Bookathon - S

 William Shakespeare. Danielle Steel. Craig Smith.

All my S authors today are bestselling rockstars in the literary universe. Amongst English Majors, nobody can get away from Shakespeare. I thought I would leave him far far behind once I graduated but no he just has a way of popping up all the time in those annoying Pop Up-Globes like someone who doesn't know the show's over and the series has jumped the shark. Yes so like everyone in high school I read Shakespeare and I can't say I loved him, after all, 500 odd years from now what plays or screenplays will we still be performing in endless remakes - do we even know? Will The Simpsons scripts seasons 2-8 or maybe Friends be lauded as the golden age of wit and social commentary and entertainment as Shakespeare's royal soap operas were in his day? 

I call them royal soap operas because many were generally about someone in power, i.e royalty, a King who had something fatally wrong with him. Fratricide being a common occurance in those feudalistic times. Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Henry V, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra were like this. Or they were sitcoms set in exotic places that often had mistaken identities and twins or star crossed lovers like Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, As you Like it, Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer night's dream, The Tempest, All's well that ends well, The Taming of the Shrew et al. 

I want to say Shakespeare may have changed my life, or had some profound influence, but I could never warm to the characters like I could to say, Joey of Friends or empathise with them like Lisa of the Simpsons. Their Elizabethan concerns seemed alien to me and I was never au fait with exactly why everyone was acting so foolishly and stupidly on stage. Women were either strumpets or naive maidens, and men were either arrogant or lovesick. If you love needless drama, read Shakespeare. 

If Shakespeare was living and performed today you would probably end up with something like Diana, the Musical which was quite entertaining on Netflix if you saw it, and he would win a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay. So I am sorry Shakespeare lovers, I can never be in raptures over the beloved Bard and have feelings for him like the Darling Buds of May.  Or he would be like Danielle Steel,  endlessly recycling plots about rich people who turn to rags and then become rich again. You have to admire Danielle Steel, she knows how to tell a yarn, but the thing about Danielle Steel is...her books always ends the same with her on the back cover with her coiffure, designer clothes and expensive jewellery looking at you and smiling as if saying 'you have made me even richer'.  (190 books and counting) 

The last author who cottoned onto a good thing and is milking it for all it's worth, and like The Simpsons, shows no sign of stopping, is one who turned a well known joke into a huge fandom for preschoolers and primary children. Of course I am talking about The Wonky Donkey. Thank you Craig Smith, for all the honky tonky, winky, wonky, dinkey donkey making fan girls and boys of us all. 

If you scan the S's at the bookshop or library today you are sure to find these taking up a lot of room on the shelves, their popularity knows no bounds and if they do get assigned reading in schools, watch out. They will drive you nuts for years to come. 

Keep going with the Great Kiwi Bookathon, where I am reading nonstop A-Z in June supporting blind and low vision children access to books.

Bookathon - R

 

Reading, writing and arithmetic? 

Today's author has 3 R's. Rachel Renee Russell, aka writer of the wildly popular series for girls Dork Diaries. For those who don't know, it's like Diary of a Wimpy Kid but told from a 14 year old girl's point of view. Nikki Maxwell and written in the style of Wimpy Kid, i.e hand written with cartoons. 

Girls absolutely love these books. As a former girl, I like them too. I guess you can say I never really grew up. Nikki lives with her mum dad, and little sister Brianna and goes to Westchester County Day School, which is actually a real-life well-to-do district in the state of New York. The problem is at this new school she is not popular, because she is a self-confessed dork and has a locker right next to a very mean snobby girl called Mackenzie Hollister who hates Nikki and makes fun of her clothes and in general acts like snakes-on-legs super villain, always bullying Nikki and giving her micro aggressions. Mackenzie is part of a group Nikki calls the CCPs -- Cute Cool and Popular. They wear the latest fashions just because they can and never have to want for anything. Nikki's dad works as a pest exterminator which is decidedly NOT cool and she is forever trying to hide the fact that that's what he does for a living.

Before I go off and tell you the entire plot of Dork Diaries I just want to establish that, at 14 years of age, these things are the most important thing in a girls life - to be able to make friends, be a friend, and fit in at school. Unlike the movie Mean Girls, Nikki did not come from living in Africa, or Grease, where Sandy came from Australia actually it's never mentioned in the books that Nikki is African American and her tormentor is what people in America call WASP. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. In the books, that doesn't figure into it. It's just full on class war. It all comes to a head in probably the best book IMHO is Frenemies Forever. This is the one where both Nikki and Mackenzie get transferred to a fancy private school. 

Luckily Nikki makes some new BFFs called Chloe and Zoe (I know right?) and they look out for each other, though the one friend Nikki makes that is most important is her diary which, you dear reader have the absolute privelege of reading. It's hilariously funny, smart and easy to read which is why girls from age 7 up love these books. Dork Diaries has gone on to about 12 books so far with her many adventures and they get better each time. At school, she gets involved with amongst other things, being a clumsy ice skater, organising a school dance, coming top in an art competition, helping out in the library, adopting a puppy, becoming a pop star, writing an anonymous advice column for the school newspaper and I think the latest one she gets to go on a school trip to Paris. That one's coming out in October. 

If you never got to do these things at school, relive your best (or worst) years in Dork Diaries. I read the near entire series in lockdown and so it was like I was back at school anyway. I also listened to them in audio, but you don't get the benefit of the illustrations when you just listen. Now some teachers might think these are just fluff, eye candy books that have no literary merit at all. Well I just say to these teachers you are no fun. Nikki is our heroine facing real life situations, and who hasn't been the new girl at school and tried to fit in? Who hasn't been a dork? Who hasn't confessed in their secret diary, all the awful things they have done? And who hasn't had an annoying sister and dreamed of being an only child? (Unless you are already an only child, lucky you). Who hasn't had an awkward crush?

One day you will look back on your school years (If you have survived them) and see, that it's all part of growing up and the most things you will learn are not actually what teachers teach in the classroom. And less boys miss out, Rachel Renee Russell has also written a series for boys about one of the characters Max Crumbly. 

If you'd like to win a brand new box set of Dork Diaries, email me and let me know.  Answer this question...what dance does Nikki do when she's happy? 

Otherwise donate to the Great Kiwi Bookathon so that our Blind and Low Vision girls can enjoy these books too. 

Bookathon - Q

 Q is for Quiet time

Of which there is sometimes precious little in a library when there's children around! I think some people have this idea that libraries are hushed places of complete silence where you could hear a pin drop, not that people carry pins these days. Most modern libraries have carpet in them so the sounds are going to be more muffled compared to the days of yore when people wrote with pen and ink and it was the school of hard knocks, and teachers went round with rulers slapping students knuckles when they made a noise. 

I don't think that exists anymore like the number of books under Q in the library you could probably count on one hand. 

The Bear Can't Babysit by Ruth Quayle is one. It's about a bear that has to babysit seven rabbits. Now in what universe would a bear be babysitting rabbits is my first question. The second is try my job babysitting 30 - 70 rabbits. That's what it was like in the library at lunchtime. 

I would be training library monitors, fielding requests for books, reading with those who wanted their book read out loud, giving out pieces of paper to make books, giving out squishmallows, breaking up fights and calming emotional meltdowns, dispensing lego, shelving, giving out chess sets, giving out crayons and colouring in sheets, doing photocopying, printing out things,  and in general, supervising boys playing 'bookshop' and girls making houses out of chairs. Children would sprawl on the floor, reading and leave the shelves in a mess, while at the same time seniors would attempt to study with earplugs stuck in their ears. The boys would be in their little groups and the girls in another. When they did jigsaw puzzles it quickly turned into a competition, and there was not unknown to be a game of 'The floor is lava' going on and children swinging on the banisters. 

I quickly gave up all hope of keeping any order. And besides everyone looked the same as they were all wearing school uniforms, and so every hat and blazer that got left behind I would just hang up at the wardrobe rack in the lobby after I announced 'I'm sorry library time is over' to collective groans. 

I did sort of feel like I was a Quasi Queen of the library if not the school because the library was open for anyone to use. I was ruling benignly and the readers were my subjects. When I walked down the corridors of the school everyone recognised me and I would wave regally.  (I would never call out that would have been un-regal) At assembly the library monitors would receive their library badges as 'Gold Librarians' and it was like an investiture. Actually the year 6's liked the pomp and ceremony, but anyone year 7 and up just wanted me to give their badges and gift books privately without embarrassment. 

Children were rather curious about the Queen and asked me to read them books about her. Then they had to change and sing God Save the King this year. It took some adjusting. Most of my children were 'little emperors' or 'little empresses' at home and already living like royalty with their parents serving them. Didn't Jesus say suffer the little children, let them come to me and do not prevent them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. If the Kingdom of Heaven is  a library, who was I to stop them? 

One can read the Queen's speeches in this book The Platinum Queen which chronicles 75 years of them. I bought that one because it would have been the only time she would have something to say to her subjects. She always wished them well and a Merry Christmas despite all their trials and tribulations and petty wars. Another one for the library shelf filed under Q. 

Please support blind and low vision children this mid-winter Christmas by donating to the Great Kiwi Bookathon. 

Bookathon - P

P is for Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut. Or Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants. Since Margaret Atwood's last name doesn't begin with P, Dav Pilkey wins out this time today.

Dav Pilkey is a dyslexic writer so you have to forgive him for mixing up all genres and doodling in his books. There's 14 Captain Underpants books and they have been a big favourite amongst boys of a certain age, until they were eclipsed by the wild success of the spin off series Dog Man, about a half man/half dog 'superhero'  who is beloved by both boys and girls from 5 and up, as well as cats, dogs, and chickens. They enjoy being read to as well. I have actually read Mothering Heights to my chicken, Martha. She really liked it.

I'm sure Marvel and DC Comics are phoning their copyright lawyers now for having their cherished comics made fun of in this manner. I have to say that I never read Captain America, or Wonder Woman and the only person I could relate to wearing their underpants on the outside was Madonna. Though Superman had a big S on his chest, I'm sure he was imaginary. But if I were to cosplay anyone surely it would be Catwoman, because she was really a Selina (Kyle) in disguise. Dog Man had to spin off again and that's how we got to Cat Kid Comic Club, where the tadpoles make their own comic books to rival Hello Kitty.

I am serious about these books. You won't find a kid in primary school who does not want to pick up a Dog Man book and laugh themselves silly, but the thing is they are READING even if the words are all spelled wrong and back to front and the policeman is half dog and half human. It's crazy and has all these references that only adults will get, because I'm sure the young Dog Man readers will not have read or picked up all the references to the classics Dav Pilkey riffs off in his titles - Mothering Heights, Fetch 22, To whom the Ball Rolls, Lord of the Fleas*, 20,000 Fleas under the sea, and Grime and Punishment. 

My Scholastic sales rep says without a doubt this series is the biggest seller of all. And for most of the appeal is that these books are published in hardback, are in full colour, and contain flip-o-ramas. What's that? You'll have to borrow them to find out and no you cannot have the same experience with an e-book. 

*I don't recommend the actual Lord of the Flies. Please don't read that book it gives me nightmares and shouldn't be assigned high school reading. Especially for high schoolers who actually came from the remote Pacific Islands that those horrible British boys were supposedly stuck on playing out like a bad episode of Survivor and the worst of colonialism. How about the reverse -  a series where islanders try to survive in the city? 

Funnily enough Dav Pilkey's other series, Ricky Ricotta about a futuristic sci-fi mouse and his side kick robot does not attract readers at all and is left languishing on the shelf, and I think its because Geronimo Stilton has the mouse's share of fabumouse books in his long running series that makes use of every mouse pun possible in all languages (the original stories are translated from Italian). 

Otherwise P is a very popular letter. 

I have written about Sylvia Plath in another blog post. And this whole business of Pride (and Prejudice) is surely rather strange. If I were to get people really thinking about what the word Pride means, as well as Prejudice and how it goes before a fall...I would give them a copy of Marcus Pfister's book The Rainbow Fish. 

Please humble yourselves and support the Great Kiwi Bookathon this month, blind and low vision children may not be able to see, but they CAN read with our generous support. 

Bookathon - O

 Oh no, I am halfway there. Already. I wonder if, this Bookathon is keeping me out of trouble or landing me more in it. I have an inkling that some people don't like others who read too much. We could actually be up to something while turning those pages. Our brains are firing. This makes world takeover by the Zombie apocalypse near impossible, because our brains are already in use. They'll only pick on the mindless people who watch tv instead. 

Today's letter is O and I have to pick George Orwell.

I can say I read the same story my mum read in school because she had a copy of Animal Farm too, and kept it. Later on in Form 5 I remember it being an assigned text for School Certificate. However most of our class didn't know it was about the Communist regime because none of us had ever lived in a place that had one. Most thought it was a tale about a farm, not unlike Charlotte's Web. We all cried when *spoiler* Boxer got sent to the knackers. 

 There WAS a regime at school however, it was quite clear that the grown ups were in power and the students were not.  We didn't have slogans like 'Four legs bad, two legs good' though. We just had 'the Massey Way' which I recall was 'Keep your hands, legs, feet and objects to yourself' . In other words, no touching, sharing or holding hands, or kicking each other. It didn't say anything about kissing. However this only lasted about five years because after that your time was up and you were free to leave and kiss whoever you liked. 

I also read 1984 about this time too, when I was 14 and it was 1994.  It was not an assigned text, but I was curious to read it. This was before the tv show Big Brother and smartphones and webcams and blogging and internet. The world it described was rather upside down, but I was also getting used to political correctness. Then the Sky Tower went up around 1996 so, we now had our very own surveillance for Auckland. Everything in the novel was becoming true. Scary! Maybe our tvs would start watching us instead of the other way round. Well now they do, it's called Zoom. 

George Orwell wasn't bothered because back in 1948 when he wrote it the world was already a scary place, and he'd been through several wars. It just seemed the twentieth century was the most bloody yet, and he didn't think it would get any better. He was the original investigative gonzo journalist though, and I do recommend reading his other books, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, and my favourite Down and out in Paris and London, in which he chronicled his life working as a dishwasher in those dirty rat infested restaurants. Anthony Bourdain would later do a similar thing with his memoir Kitchen Confidential, but then he was an actual executive chef working in NYC, whereas George Orwell was just slumming it and was always going to be a writer.

Back then, the working class people (in his words, 'the proles') just did not write books. Firstly they didn't have the time, and secondly, they didn't have the education to read and write, and thirdly who would publish them  anyway.  Orwell wrote a famous essay called 'Why I write' in which he wrote his reasons, most often political, and then one about the craft of writing in which he wrote 'Good prose should be like a window pane'. I've never forgotten it. If ever the 20th century needed an author, George Orwell was going to be the one who wrote Truth to Power,  as back then power was like a big jackboot crushing and silencing the little people. 

The ironic thing was later on George Orwell repented of his polemic and claimed he wanted a quiet life tending roses in his garden. However I am glad he wrote all these books for us to read  instead of Gardening with Old Roses. 

Join me in The Great Kiwi Bookathon, and I would recommend reading Animal Farm out loud, it's a great story. 

Bookathon - N

 N is for Nobel Prize, Newberry Award, Notable Books

Surprisingly there are very few N authors I can name that stand out for me. So if you are thinking of a possible pseudonym, consider starting it with N. 

One book that the children love that even blind and low vision children will appreciate is The Book with no Pictures by B J Novak. 

Don't judge a book by it's cover, or it's pictures, judge this book by the silly monkey voice you have to put on when you read it out loud. As far as I know, he hasn't written a book called The Book with no Words, though there ARE wordless books around. For those ones you have to make up the story as you go (which I've heard some teachers actually do, because they can't read). 

My book with no Pictures is one that you write in yourself. I am all for writing your own books, if you can't get to a bookshop or library and you've run out of Reader's Digest condensed fiction. No, we never won any of the sweepstakes they used to send us either. 

Otherwise you mostly have a choice between Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov or the Borrowers by Mary Norton. I don't really recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran. You can if you want, but Tehran is a long way from New Zealand. Lolita is one of those books that have you squirming in horror that there are men out there who 'love' underage girls and underage girls that fall for them. Readers seem to love true crime and murder mysteries but when it comes to child abuse (Lolita is 12 in the novel) nobody seems to bat an eye. However there are worse books you could read that haven't been celebrated as literary masterpieces.

The Borrowers is about a family of tiny people who inhabit the houses of big people, like mice except they are people. They sleep in matchboxes and feed off crumbs the big people drop, and nobody really knows they are there, for if they are found out they may be banished and lose their squatter's rights. I've always liked books like these about Little People, Big Dreams, or Stuart Little, the Baby-sitter's Little Sister and even Little Women. I think little people are underestimated and often ignored by big people, but when the little people win out, everyone cheers. 

I am also a borrower, so if you are one too, I recommend borrowing these books. You might have to ask a Big person if the book is out of reach, though when I work in libraries I always make sure the little people can reach the little books on the bottom shelves, because little people have their lives to live too and shouldn't have to live at the mercy and whims of the Big People. 

Support little people by donating to the Great Kiwi Bookathon

Bookathon - M

 Margaret Mahy. Katherine Mansfield. Margaret Mitchell.

It doesn't matter so much what *I* like to read. When you are reading aloud to an audience, the most important thing is to read what they like. Or in that mythical bedtime story session that I never really had as a child. If that ever happened, I don't remember it. I only ever remember one time I was sick and couldn't sleep, I asked the nurse if she'd read me The Secret Garden. 

This was because my parents never read to me as a child. We had TV to entertain us at the touch of a button.  We had radio. What was the point of books?

However I still remember those old school cassettes that had stories on them and made a bell sound when it was time to turn the page. 

Books are meant to be shared, especially picture books. I've never got why reading has turned out to be such a solitary activity, but then introverts like me take to it like a duck to water. 

I digress. Who's the M author today? Margaret Mahy is well loved and still up there with the best. She was a  librarian who wrote at night when her children were asleep. She's the original word witch, and anytime you read a Mahy book something out of the ordinary will happen, whether it's A Lion in the Meadow or a Great White Man Eating Shark. My favourite was Nonstop Nonsense. She could make a story out of anything, pulling words out of a dictionary like a magician pulls a bunny out of a hat.

Another Margaret - Margaret Mitchell only wrote one novel, the 1036 page Gone with the Wind. I must mention it because I've read it several times and the ending always gets me. Tomorrow is another day. When you've lived through a civil war, you have to be glad you survived. For me, the book is a talisman for facing the worst case scenario. What would Scarlett O'Hara do? This book was turned into the classic 1939 MGM movie. It's only about 4 hours long, but it's epic. Reading it may take more of your time, but it's totally worth it. 

Katherine Mansfield is one of our own who left these shores for her OE and never returned. However The Garden Party and The Aloe have become our very own short stories that Kiwis have taken to heart. 

But what of picture books? Well two M authors today have honorable mention. Dawn McMillan's I need a new Bum! has actually been controversial (in the US, a teacher was fired for reading it in class) but it's too hilarious to be kept hidden in the teacher's resource cupboard. Every child loves it even the poker faced ones who claim it's too juvenile. But you know what? You are never too old for fairy tales or rhyming stories about bums. 

Then there's Kyle Mewburn's Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! You have to read this one out loud. Whaea Selina says so. Read them in bed, read them on the stairs, read these books on chairs. Read them on the loo, read them in a hammock, read them on the train to Britomart, and read them walking up Lincoln Road without crashing into anyone. 

Don't forget to support our blind and low vision children in the Great Kiwi Bookathon this month.

Bookathon - L

 L is for Library, Love Letters and Literature

I found L a particularly hard one to choose just one author. I went to the Hard to Find (but worth the Effort) bookshop today that had floor to ceiling books in numerous rooms. I would have been in a librarian's heaven if only I had the budget but that didn't stop me from my favourite activity, browsing the shelves. 

It seemed lots of people like to give the Hard to Find Bookshop their well-read copies of Doris Lessing novels because they occupied an entire shelf of Ls. Unfortunately I have never read any of her books. 

I have however read these ..Les Liasions Dangereuses by Pierre Charderlos Laclos, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka, and The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin.

I would recommend all three, the first because it's terribly decadent novel where the characters all get what they deserve in the end, the second for being hilariously funny as fish out water situations are, (and nothing to do with the present day war)  and the third because there is nothing more terrible than being a vapid desperate housewife. I recall they all turned out to be robots in the end.  Ira Levin also wrote the chilling horror Rosemary's Baby. 

You don't have to read just the L books in the fiction section though. The L books that the children loved the most in the library picture book section are the ones written by Andy Lee. I have had whole classes in uproar when I read Do Not open this Book, Do Not open this book (Again!) and Seriously, Do not open this book (or else). 

Warning they contain, amongst other things, nudity, kissing and making fun of old people. All things children love. 

I am a rebellious librarian though, I open these books and put terrible ideas into children's heads. I don't listen to what the teachers tell me to read, I look at the pictures and make up stories sometimes when the words don't make sense.  I read books that are too hard for me. I read banned books. I read the Bible. I read other people's love letters, and I read their secret diaries too. I read out loud when I should be quiet, and I read in places where you are not meant to read, like on the loo. At University, I didn't really *study* anything, It was just an excuse to read all the books I wanted to read in the library. I also read books when I was supposed to be working but ssh don't tell anyone. 

Please support my terrible reading habit by donating to the Great Kiwi Bookathon, now I've been banned from the library

Bookathon - K

 Stephen King. Jeff Kinney. Sophie Kinsella. Marie Kondo.

I can't recommend Stephen King unfortunately, the one time I tried to read  The Stand, and I was getting through it, I really was, the paperback fell apart I got near the end and found that the last chapters were missing, possibly because it was fished out of the recycle. I had to bury the book again and never went back to Stephen King. He crops up every now and then when young boys borrow horror books in hopes of scaring the librarian, and claim they have read Stephen King when really they have only read the title but have seen the movie (or played the video game, as in the case of Five nights at Freddys). 

Another video game addict is the anti hero of Jeff Kinney's books Diary of a Wimpy Kid, about middle schooler Greg Heffley now onto his 16th volume. His game of choice is Twisted Wizard and throughout the series he's always trying to corrupt his best friend Rowley Jefferson into playing it when he's not allowed. Rowley got his own spin off books and a Spooky Stories one that is was one of my favourites which to me was better than Stephen King. Plus these books have pictures. 

But I think Shopaholic Series by Sophie Kinsella takes the cake as the most addictive series of chick lit ever written because it plays on the ditzy femme stereotype of a woman with a lot of money/credit and no sense. Rebecca Bloomwood is annoyingly a marketer's dream because she's constantly scheming of being the girl with the George and Denny scarf and her financial mishaps land her in a lot of hot water. Sometimes it's just fun to read about complete idiots, it makes you feel so much better about yourself. 

Which brings me to Marie Kondo. Where she had been all my life, I don't know, but I was a self-confessed Messy Person until I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Also available in manga. Marie Kondo is a Japanese minimalist apartment dweller who has perfected the art of folding her socks. No truly she is a real person this is not a novel or work of fiction - it's self help! I did not know that the best thing to do was chuck everything away, and start over, keeping only the things that 'spark joy'. 

Of course I have applied Marie Kondo's philosophy and tidying up system to the library with mixed results. Maybe she will get into feng shui next, I don't know. Because once I started tidying up the library, the Principal didn't like it and chucked me out when it started sparking too much joy in the children. So I left it for her to tidy up so she too can experience the joy of putting over 9000 books in alphabetical and dewey decimal order. 

Thanks for reading and don't forget to donate to the Great Kiwi Bookathon this month 😍

Bookathon - J

 J K Rowling, J R R Tolkien, J D Salinger...

All J names, but in library world we go by surname. I really wanted to mention Saint John the Divine, in what is one of my most favourite books in the entire history of books,  but his only last name I can tell is that he is John of Patmos. He wrote of course, one of the gospels, several letters and the Revelation of Jesus Christ which is the very last book in the Holy Bible. 

For unbelievers, its fantasy on a huge scale, there's angels, demons, dragons, huge beasts with ten heads and the dystopia that is Hell, while Jezebel gets her comeuppance when Babylon is destroyed. There's also that battle in Armageddon. Heady stuff. 

For believers, it's a book that will bless you (even says on the last page, blessed are those who read this book) because Jesus is coming on his white horse bringing salvation and Heaven to earth. 

I like a book where the good guys and their angels win and the evil one and his demons get tossed into a lake of fire. And it's all true (there really were seven churches in the Mediterranean, and John really did live on the island of Patmos)

CS Lewis Chronicles of Narnia and JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings can only pale in comparison. 

If you can't find the Holy Bible, I suppose there's other J books you can find, though the only one that stood out for me as a fantasy that you might wish was real is NZ author Sherryl Jordan. I recommend Winter of Fire and the Juniper Game. They are set in medieval times and are about daring heroines who have supernatural powers. These were written before Disney's Frozen became popular. Perfect for YA teen girls.

Sometimes you just want a heroine to save the day, instead of Hercules or Batman or Spiderman or Harry Potter or whoever. Why should guys have all the fun?

Recommend a book in the comments below or donate to help me reach my goal for  Great Kiwi Bookathon this June. You'll be helping blind and low vision children access books.

Bookathon - I

 I-spy..or I-books?

Letter I was a toss up. It's Great Kiwi Bookathon, so I thought I would go native, though I don't want to ignore Kazuo Ishiguro, who is one of those literature Nobel Prize winners. I've only read two of his books, but I've never forgotten Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go (both made into stunning movies). Kazuo Ishiguro is Japanese, but he writes in English since he grew up in England from when he was five. Both of the aforementioned novels are set in England, but Remains of the Day is possibly more English than the English themselves. So straightlaced and uptight and oh-so-proper is the butler in Remains of the Day that you wonder if it borders on parody. In the novel, the butler is the employ of an aristocratic family, and does everything for them with white gloves like ironing the newspapers. It doesn't matter that his employers are total Nazi fascist sympathisers and have never repented for their ill gotten gains, the facade must be maintained. 

Never Let me Go is a Science Fiction that has me thinking if I had a genetic twin, would I in the future borrow them for spare parts? I often have thoughts of cloning myself when I'm working sole charge in the library and the administration doesn't want to give me a paid assistant. However I was let go, so that doesn't work. This novel is haunting and raises questions like all good Sci - Fi novels do, about humanity and what to do if you find out that you actually ARE a test tube baby. 

Other than that, the other I author I'd like to mention is Witi Ihimaera. While some of his novels can be wordy, I must mention that I remember writing to him once with my hotmail and asking if he had any tips on writing and he wrote back and said just write everyday and keep at it. Author of Pounamu Pounamu, Tangi, White Lies, The Whale Rider, Dear Miss Mansfield and several other now-famous- in-New Zealand novels, Ihimaera's body of work is essential to the Maori renaissance and opens up our rich bicultural dialogue. In recent times he's retold Purakau (Maori myth and legend) into a grand epic of oceanic navigation, and written two of his memoirs, a third yet to come. He can whakapapa back to the original migration, and anyone who is tangata whenua would be able to relate to any of his writing, whether writing about gossiping aunties, rogue cousins, whanau rivalry or trying to pass for white. You could visit a Marae or study Te reo in school, but that's not the same as what it is to BE Maori. If you read Ihimaera, you'll begin to understand. 

Sometimes writers can feel like they are in a foreign country ruled by unseen forces and trying to mansplain everyone's  obscure customs to you, but that is what good writing does. It keeps you thinking long after you've finished the book and returned it to the library. 

Donate to the Bookathon

Bookathon - H

 Harry Potter. Hairy Maclary. Hagar the Horrible.

Or Happy, Healthy, Harmonious and High Achieving (motto of Ranui School). Principal Heather liked H words. My author today is one that I think all teachers and those working in primary education ought to read. Torey Hayden.

Torey Hayden has written a few novels, and a few children's books but it's actually her non-fiction that I have devoured ever since I found Silent Boy in one of the pop-up library fridges one day. Silent Boy aka Murphy's Boy is about a boy who's a selective mute and Torey's job was as a special education teacher/social worker to draw him out. He hadn't spoken in 8 years and he was 15 when she met him. Through daily contact and just being present, spending one on one time with him even when he was threatening to knife her, Torey managed to break through the wall of silence. 

Most of her books are like that, about emotionally disturbed children who can't be in the classroom and have problems ranging from defiant behaviour, autism, tourettes, selective mutism, ADHD, OCD or a combination of all. Some are pregnant at 12 years old, some are 6 year old geniuses like Sheila in One Child. Others are just Lost. The parents are either divorced, separated, absent, dead, poor, child molestors, or even closet Satan worshippers. A few are alcoholics and in jail. I remember reading one where the child was so traumatised because her mother abandoned her on the side of the road. Torey became the mother figure for all these children, even God like. 

One way of reaching out to these children after setting up a classroom and bringing in the toys (this is the fun part of special ed) is simply reading with the child to establish bonds, whether it was a She-Ra comic or Antoine de Saint Exupery's Little Prince. Apart from tying their shoelaces and sometimes having to change their clothes and brush their hair of course. Some children never got a birthday party since their parents didn't want to remember them or they had no friends to invite so Torey would bake a cake and they would have a birthday party at school. Or they would make chocolate pudding. 

This is the basis for relationship-based learning, something now enshrined in the pedagogy of many primary schools, since we are now seeing record numbers of children exhibiting complex behaviours, now that parents are working over time to put a roof over their heads and I don't know how many come from completely broken homes. All children simply want to be loved. Torey's special magic was no discipline technique, lesson plan, or reward scheme, it was  nothing more than complete unconditional love. 

Sometimes she over stepped the boundaries a few times, since her middle class upbringing didn't account for what she witnessed when she did home visits. But that was a learning curve for her. Sometimes I think teachers forget that many children don't grow up like they did where they took the basics for granted and then punish children for coping the only way they know how. 

I was one of those silent children who never spoke a word at school when I didn't have to. Who would want to hear what I had to say anyway, and most people just assumed I couldn't speak English. But I think children's voices are very important, if they know someone would take the time to listen. 

My favourite of Torey Hayden's books was one called Just Another Kid, where she has a parent helper who helps out in her special ed class, who needs a  bit of help herself. Maybe most of us in education stay in school because they want to relive our childhoods in a safe environment, around  someone who cares. Torey Haydens books are a gift, have been translated into over 35 languages around the world, and ought to be on every teacher's bookshelf.

Bookathon - G

 Goosebumps. Garfield. Geronimo Stilton. Sorry, those are not authors. 

Sometimes I read things I don't like, but I'm glad I read them anyway. It gives you a new perspective on things, Reading about your hometown can be quietly discomforting, especially if its from before you were born so there's no nostalgia about it, but a kind of reckoning. If there really were taniwhas in my backyard, I'll want to know about it.

My pick for today is G - Maurice Gee. No he didn't write about taniwhas, he was too Pakeha for that. He wrote about mysterious creatures who lived Under the Mountain that wanted to take over Auckland. Or the Halfmen of O, or The Fat Man, who was this pervert that lived in Henderson but somehow go incorporated into a novel for children. He changed the name to Loomis, of which I don't know why, as I'd never heard of a place called Loomis and thought he should have been honest and kept Henderson. There is no shame in coming from Henderson surely. 

Maurice Gee's Henderson/Loomis is peopled with shady types, crooks, and crims. It's the wild west far from Remuera, the North Shore and all that is respectable. In the olden days before the motorway came, it was a small country town where people lived in quiet desperation because they couldn't afford the fancier suburbs. There were  vineyards and orchards where Dally's brewed their plonk...sherry, port, cider and moonshine. 

People drowned in the creek. 

When I pick up a novel by Maurice Gee I fully expect that someone will meet a violent end somehow and their body will end up in the Henderson creek. 

I started reading the Plum trilogy which is lauded as the Great Kiwi Novel. It's a saga about one family, the patriarch is a Presbyterian minister who ends up losing his faith but still wants to practice as an agnostic. The mother is a thwarted novelist and the dad is a boxing champion, much like Maurice Gee's own family. I am sure you can read his own memoir and put the pieces together, its actually more fascinating than anything he made up himself. All this drama happens on Great North Road and specifically Newington Road where the Gees lived, which is just above the creek and near the Catholic school. Apparently there was a rivalry between Catholics and non-Catholics back in the day and several class wars going on. It sounds really grim and I am not surprised that Gee left town to live in sunny Nelson. He could have just moved sideways into Sunnyvale but I think he had to get out.

I want to write the Great Kiwi Novel too. In my version, Henderson Square is the centre of town until it is taken over by Australians and turned into 'West City Shoppingtown' and some skulduggery happens where all the profits are siphoned off overseas. The mayor of Henderson wakes up one day when his rival incumbent reveals his plans to sell Henderson creek down the river and turn it into a tourist attraction for Shortland Street fans. It's up to the Twin Streams brigade to stop them, so the oldies at the Waitakere Gardens start a march in protest. They want to grow old and die there, and they don't want anyone blocking their cherished view of the Waitakere Ranges. 

If you go down to the Waitakere civic centre today, by the railway I'm sure there's a little walk of fame somewhere on the footpath where Maurice Gee has his star.